Yesterday I was so busy trying to make sure there were no errors I managed to suggest that Catherine was born in 1489. She was of course born in 1485.
By the time she was thirteen she was living at the Alhambra and it was from here that she exchanged letters with Arthur. He, writing from Ludlow in 1499, described their letters as a “sweet remembrance.” Tremlett reveals that Henry VII and Elizabeth of York were just as excited by this exchange of letters. Of course, given that the writers were thirteen at the time and that they were written in Latin it may be assumed that tutors were involved and so was the game of courtly love.
In the meantime Roderigo De Puebla, the Spanish ambassador, was keeping the Spanish court informed of events in England. De Puebla complained that the English changed their minds rather often and that the water wasn’t safe to drink.
On 27 September 1501 Catherine set sail for England, crossed the Bay of Biscay, got caught in a storm off Brittany and arrived in Plymouth on October 2nd 1501. News of her arrival had come before her as it is noted in the margin of Margaret Beaufort’s Book of Hours. In total the journey across Spain from the Alhambra to England had taken four months. It would be another month before Catherine reached Hampshire and on November 6th she arrived at Dogmersfield where she met her prospective father-in-law and husband which ran counter to Spanish custom – there was, of course, a language difficulty.
On November 12 1501 Catherine entered London accompanied by the ten-year-old Duke of York, Prince Henry, a papal legate and an entourage composed of both nationalities. Tremlett and Penn describe the pageant, the gifts and the politics. Two days later she was married at St Paul’s Cathedral. The wedding dress which was white caused some comment and then it was on to business. First an announcement was made as to the size of Catherine’s dowry and then it was over to the eighteen bishops and abbots. John Fisher revealed that Margaret Beaufort cried rather a lot and rather oddly to modern eyes that the newly married Catherine was led from the cathedral not by her husband but by her brother-in-law, Prince Henry.
There then followed a ritual involving the earl of Oxford testing the bed of state, on both sides, to make sure it had been made properly and a sprinkling of Holy Water from the assembled bishops. The following morning Arthur announced that being married was thirsty work and in so doing unleashed centuries of speculation that an inspection of the bed sheets, another traditional pastime, should have confirmed…but in this instance didn’t. In any event the couple were young. They had their whole lives ahead of them.
By late December Catherine and Arthur were in Ludlow on the Welsh borders…very different from the Alhambra. We know that Catherine formed a friendship with Margaret Pole the daughter of the Duke of Clarence and sister of the Earl of Warwick executed to facilitate the wedding of Catherine and Arthur. What we don’t know is how close Arthur and Catherine were as husband and wife. Once again Tremlett provides both sides of the later argument. Catherine insisted that Arthur came to her room on only seven occasions whilst a member of his own household suggested that the pair were frequently together. We do know that Arthur was smitten when he first met his bride and by all accounts Arthur, though shorter than his petite bride, was a kind and well educated young man.
And then sweating sickness arrived or possibly tuberculosis. In any event on April 2nd 1502, approximately six months after her marriage Catherine found herself widowed at the age of sixteen. Arthur’s heart was buried in Ludlow whilst the rest of him was interred in Worcester Cathedral. Elizabeth of York, who got on well with Catherine, sent a litter to fetch her daughter-in-law back to London.
Double click on the image of Prince Arthur to open up a post by The Freelance History Writer about Prince Arthur and more about his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
Thomas Penn’s book is about Henry VII and called Winter King. See the bibliography for more details of his work and also of Tremlett’s.
Katherine Parr, the wife who survived, was the daughter of Thomas Parr of Kendal who died in 1517. She was also twice widowed; first married to Sir Edward Burough when she was about fifteen, but was widowed shortly after in 1529. Her second husband was Sir John Nevill, Lord Latimer. He was a wealthy landowner in Yorkshire, his land was in the path of the pilgrims of the 1536 Pilgrimage of Grace and the family were held hostage. He died in 1542 just as Henry was looking for another wife.
Henry’s ‘rose without a thorn’ and ‘jewel’ was Anne Boleyn’s cousin and the Duke of Norfolk’s niece. Her father was the duke’s youngest brother. The Howard family together with every other noble house in the country seemed to have spent considerable time and effort dangling promising young women in front of Henry following the Cleves debacle. Of course, she was also descended from the Plantagenets so a dispensation was required but more importantly Katherine required a dispensation because of cousin Anne – Henry didn’t want a rerun of the Leviticus/Deuteronomy argument.
Prior to her marriage Anne of Cleves used the emblem of two white swans which stood for innocence and honesty or sincerity. They were also supporters of the Cleves badge coming as they did from the story of one of Anne’s ancestors who was guided down the Rhine by a pair of swans. It should be added that more factually, like all his wives, Henry was related to Anne – through a daughter of Edward I.
It’s odd too that poor Anne should have been lumbered with the title Flanders Mare when the portrait by Holbein shows someone very different to that particular sobriquet. It has been suggested that Holbein had played up Anne’s beauty when he visited the court of Cleves to paint Anne and her sister Amelia but there again no one accused him of making the full length portrait of Christina more striking than the lady in question really was. Anne of course hadn’t turned down the opportunity to marry Henry, Christina said that she’d be more than happy to marry him if she had a spare head.
Jane Seymour, perhaps the original Plain Jane if Chapuys comments are to be believed, became wife number three on 30th May 1536. She was another descendent of Edward III via Hotspur. She’d also been a lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon and also to Anne Boleyn. One story said that Anne was deeply distressed to encounter Jane sitting on Henry’s lap. Her chosen motto was “Bound to serve and obey” – a wise choice given Henry’s complaints about wife number two and presumably wife number one’s implacable logic and argument. Her emblem is the phoenix rising from a tower surrounded by those burgeoning roses reflecting both a Plantagenet and Lancastrian inheritance. The pheonix is a symbol of love and renewal. Jane is the renewed Tudor hope for an heir.
It was 1514 when the first rumour of a possible annulment in Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon drew breath. In 1516 a princess was born and for a time there was hope but by 1525 Catherine was beyond the age of childbearing and Henry ceased to cohabit with his wife. He’d been involved romantically with several of Catherine’s maids by that time and had been dallying with Mary Boleyn since 1522. In 1526 Henry found himself falling in love with Mary’s sister Anne. The following year he proposed and started proceedings to remove Catherine from the picture. She didn’t go without a fight. Of course there was also the small matter of getting rid of all of Catherine of Aragon’s pomegranate symbols from buildings, furniture etc and replacing it with Anne’s emblem and initials.
